Future Construction and the Trajectories of Classes

That the (imaginative) construction of the future guides social practice and can thus have real consequences for individuals, social groups, movements, classes, and even entire societies is an important insight from the older and more recent sociological examination of the future. The manifold interdependencies between subjective and objective futures have not been fully deciphered, but it seems obvious to analyze the construction process of the future both as an instrument of domination and as a possible transformative power. The pathos of agency, however, which is sometimes posited against the fatalism that accompanies the multiple crises of contemporary societies, once again fails to adequately account for the structural side of the dialectic of the future. Another world is certainly possible, but neither is every future possible nor desirable for everyone. Who can be addressed with which future narrative and when is by no means clear – and often the question on which social movements fail. The proposed contribution is conceptual in nature and argues for a stronger focus on the material foundations of the construction of the future. With the help of Bourdieu's concept of the "trajectories" of social classes, which has so far received little attention in his reception, a heuristic for a dynamic class analysis is developed. Trajectories are upward and downward movements of classes along crucial dimensions of inequality. They are intended to explain deep-seated dispositions for the future, on the basis of which future narratives emerge and take hold. Because trajectories cut across established principles of hierarchy, they should also help to identify homologies of classes across the social space and thus the basis for possible coalitions, both regressive and progressive.